THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ETHEL LINA WHITE. Ethel Lina White
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and flung it on the chair.
"Dirty weather," he said. "It made me late. The roads are like broth. How is Lady Warren tonight?"
"Just the same; she wants me to sleep with her."
"Well, if I know anything about you, you'll enjoy doing that," grinned the doctor. "Something new."
"But I'm dreading it," wailed Helen. "I'm just hanging on you to tell them I'm not—not competent."
"Jim-jams? Has the house got you, too? Are you finding it too lonely here?"
"Oh, no, it's not just nerves. I've got a reason for being afraid."
Contrary to her former experience, Helen held the doctor's attention, while she told him the story of the revolver.
"It's a rum yarn," he said. "But I'd believe anything of that old surprise-packet. I'll see if I can find out where she's hidden it."
"And you'll say I'm not to sleep with her?" insisted Helen.
But things were not so simple as that, for Dr. Parry rubbed his chin doubtfully.
"I can't promise. I must see the nurse first. She may really need a good night, if she's come straight off duty. I'd better be going up."
He swung open the doors leading to the hall. As they crossed it, he spoke to her in an undertone.
"Buck up, old lady. It won't be loaded. In any case, her eye will be out, after all these years."
"She hit the nurse," Helen reminded him.
"Sheer fluke. Remember, she's an old woman. Don't bother to come up."
"No, I'd better introduce you formally to the nurse," insisted Helen, who was anxious not to infringe professional etiquette.
But the glare in Nurse Barker's eye, when she opened the door, in answer to Helen's knock, told her that she had blundered again."
"I've brought up Dr. Parry," said Helen.
Nurse Barker inclined her head in a stately bow.
"How long have you been here, doctor?" she asked.
"Oh, five minutes or so," he replied.
"In future doctor, will you please come straight to the bedroom?" asked the nurse. "Lady Warren has been worried, because you were late."
"Certainly, nurse, if it's like that," said the doctor.
Helen turned away with a sinking heart. The woman seemed to dominate the young doctor with her will even as she appeared to tower over him—an optical illusion, due to the white overall.
Simone—in all the glory of her sensational gown—swept past her in the hall. Even in the midst of her own problem, Helen noticed that she was literally drenched with emotion. Her eyes sparkled with tears, her lips trembled, her hands were clenched.
She was in the grip of frustrate desire, which converted her into a storm-centre of rage. She was angry with Newton—because he was an obstacle; angry with Stephen—because he was unresponsive; angry with herself—because she had lost her grip.
And all these complex passions were slowly merging on one person whom she believed to be the other woman in the case. She was obsessed with the idea that Stephen was turning her down for the sake of the flaxen-haired barmaid at the Bull.
The help, in spite of her new frock, might have been invisible, for she passed her without the slightest notice. And when Helen reached the kitchen, Mrs. Oates also received her with silent gloom.
It seemed as though the mental atmosphere of the Summit was curdled with acidity.
"You won't have to hold back dinner much longer," said Helen in the hope of cheering Mrs. Oates. "The doctor will soon be gone."
"It's not that," remarked Mrs. Oates glumly.
"Then what's the matter?"
"Oates."
"What's he done?"
"Nothing. But he's always here, night and day, so that a woman can't never be alone. Don't you never get married, miss."
Helen stared at her. She had always admired the good nature with which Mrs. Oates accepted her husband's laziness and supplemented his efforts. Although he did not pull his weight, she always made a joke of it, while a rough, but real, affection turned their partnership into very good company.
"It's for better, or worse," said Helen tactfully, "and I can understand Mr. Oates grabbing you; because he could see you were a 'better'. Now, I can't see the man who'd marry Nurse Barker. I wonder if she drinks."
"Eh?" asked Mrs. Oates absently.
"Well," shrugged Helen, "she was probably right to insist on having the brandy, even if Miss Warren does say that the oxygen is Lady Warren's life."
Mrs. Oates only stared at Helen—her brow puckered as though she were grappling with a complicated sum in vulgar fractions. Presently, however, she finished her calculations, and gave her own jolly laugh.
"Well, you don't often see me under the weather, do you?" she asked. "And, talking of husbands, the best is bad, but I've got the best. Now, my dear, just listen for the doctor. Directly he goes, I want to slip upstairs with a bit of pudding for Nurse."
Helen vaguely resented the attention as treachery towards herself.
"Take her tipsy-cake, to go with her brandy," she advised.
"Now, somebody's on her hind-legs." Mrs. Oates laughed. "But she's got to go through the night on only a snack. She may look like a slab of stale fish, but a nurse's life is a hard one."
Helen felt ashamed of her resentment, as she waited on the kitchen stairs, which was her listening-in station. She was still puzzled by Mrs. Oates' changes of mood, for she was not temperamental by nature.
For no explicable reason, she swayed to and fro, like a weathercock. Whence came the mysterious wind which was blowing on her?
"There's something wrong about this house, tonight," decided Helen.
Hearing Dr. Parry's voice in the distance, she shouted to Mrs. Oates, and dashed up into the hall. Directly he saw her, Dr. Parry came to meet her. His face was red and he bristled with suppressed anger.
"Miss Capel," he said, using the formal voice of a stranger, "if there is any question of your sleeping with Lady Warren, tonight, understand, I will not sanction it."
Helen realised, at once, that Nurse Barker had overreached herself with her high-handed methods. Although her heart sang at her release, experience had taught her the advantage of appealing to the fount of authority.
"Yes, doctor," she said meekly. "But if Nurse Barker goes to Miss Warren, she'll get her own way."
"In that case," he said, "I'll go straight to the Professor. No woman shall bully-rag me. If there's any opposition to my orders, some other doctor can take the case. I only hang on, because my own mother—the dearest soul—had a tongue which would raise a blister on a tortoise's back. For her sake, I've a bit of a weak spot for the old b—blessing."
Helen drew back when they reached the Professor's study.
"Come in with me," said the doctor.
In spite of her awe of the Professor, Helen obeyed eagerly. The curiosity which would have propelled her to visit any strange and savage beast in its lair, made her anxious to see her employer in his privacy.
She was struck by the resemblance to Miss Warren's room. Like hers, the furniture was merely incidental to the books and papers—supplemented in the case of the Professor, by files and shelves of volumes of reference. There was no trace of the comfort usually characteristic of a man's den—no shabby Varsity chair, no old slippers, or tobacco-jar.
The Professor sat at his American roll-top desk, his finger-tips pressed against his temples. When he looked up, his face appeared blanched and strained.
"Headache?"